Monday, August 1, 2011

Let's just forget how I've wronged you and listen to these tunes

I'm sooooo sorry. I just ran out of time on Friday. I swear. I felt bad all weekend that I left you hanging. Thursday I told you I would have songs for you for the weekend and I dropped the ball. I'm sorry. Let's just forget about that happening, sit back and enjoy these tunes.

These songs go out to the three clowns talking very loudly in the coffee shop about politics. You don't know what you are talking about. Please stop.

Wolfgang Voigt walked out of the club onto the dark streets of Cologne. It was late July and the air was dry and stale. He was the only person on the street as he walked toward the middle of town. He walked and walked through the hot summer night until he got to his apartment. It was 1996, minimalism was just starting to get on its feet and he was at the center of it. He climbed the stair well up to the roof of his apartment building that over looked the city. Even though it was four in the morning he could still see countless buildings lit up all around the city. It was hot, humid, and it was late summer - no one was sleeping tonight.

He stood on the edge of his building and looked down. He thought to himself, 'The summer is hot, it can suck the will to live out of even the strongest man. I am only one man, but I will break the stranglehold the heat has on the city my producing the coldest minimal beat this town has ever heard. It will fall upon ears dying for the coldness that is reserved for nights in January - it will set them free'.

For a bitching reggae track their really isn't much going on here. Besides some guitar work, some bongos, and midi strings, it is just an excellent example of well produced vocal tracks. The vocals make this track work and it pays off. Is this minimalism for reggae - why can't there be more tracks like this?

I can't tell you how obsessed I was with this album when it came out. This track was the first song I heard off of the album and two years later it has aged really well. A great example of late 00's electro/disco adventure. If you heard of this album it was because it was the brainchild of one of the clowns from Vampire Weekend. It probably never got the recognition it deserved because it sounds nothing like Vampire Weekend and that is why it is great. This guy, who was in a huge band at the time, went out off and made an album that he didn't need to make and made it sound like nothing else. I truly believe this is one of the most underrated albums in the last five years. It holds up with some of the best albums of that time and two years later it is still fresh.